They both knew that the other had seen something. Watched someone die. How else would they be able to see the thestrals?
And both were dead curious, but too polite to ask the other.
Although, this would be the perfect time for it, Rose reasoned. It was hard to find Remus alone without the rest of the gang, as they always seemed to surround him, to protect him, somehow. And Sirius would often get impatient with her if she would talk to Lupin and not him.
They were both the most intellectual of the group, or that was to say the ones who actually enjoyed studying, although they didn't need to study at all for their grades. (James and Sirius wouldn't study and got somewhat fair marks, worrying more about getting a laugh. Ellie studied hard (though she didn't really need to), and was often favored for all of her hard work. Peter barely made the grade with the rest of them helping him as best they could.)
Rose and Remus had always felt like kindred spirits when it came to the classroom, and the forest was no different. But, Rose also wondered if she even wanted to know. She hoped it didn't have anything to do with his lycanthropy. She didn't know if killing someone as a werewolf counted a watching someone die.
Lupin too was curious, but knew that asking might trigger some kind of response that he didn't need to be dealing with in the middle of the woods.
His problem was solved for him.
"When I was ten, we used to go down to a little quarry near my house to swim. It's quite popular. The locals all go there to cool off when the weather gets hot," Rose began.
Her story was told simply, as though at one point it had been sorrowful to her, but had since become something routinely told to those who were curious. Lupin nodded, knowing the place. He had been there several times when he had visited James. It was a fun place to wile away summer afternoons, with the water flowing cool and fresh, and the trees creating shade above.
"I had older neighbors who used to take us. Nate and I, I mean, while my parents ran the apothecary. We were there one day, just after a rainstorm. It was hot and crowded, and everyone was in the water to cool off. There were no guards, no first aide kits, nothing. Just a ton of kids. I was out sitting on a rock, when I saw someone on top of the water, facing down. I didn't say anything. Figured that he was just floating. That everything was just normal. Then my friends splashed me, and I went back in. Nobody knew that he was dead until we all got out to go home. Needless to say, we were never allowed to go after that. He was only five years old. Lived down the street, and had followed us there apparently. I've seen the thestrals ever since," she finished. Not sounding particularly upset, just understanding that death was just another part of life.
Remus had kept up nodding and looking sincere the whole time he listened to the story. He was a good listener.
"That must have been awful," he said to no one in particular.
"It was worse on everyone else, I think. The poor boy's parents..." She trailed off, watching shadows slinking around the trees.
Remus cleared his throat, as if to begin to tell his own story.
"I've seen them every year. When I was six, I was in muggle London, on the way to visit my gran. There was an automobile wreck outside of her flat, and no one had called any of the muggle emergency responders yet. My mother dropped my hand and ran to the nearest neighbor, and I wandered over to the wreck. There were two cars, full of people with all sorts of injuries. It must have been one of them. I never knew which one. But there was a lot of blood. I had nightmares for years as a child," he explained. He seemed more saddened by his tale than she had been over hers. It seemed like it had been a rude awakening in his childhood to find that not all blood and guts were as glorified as they were supposed to be.
"That must have been hard for you," Rose replied, her voice a reverent whisper.
"My mother was mortified," Lupin recalled, distantly. "I remember that she burst into tears the moment that she saw where I was."
They finally came to a clearing, one where the leaves and grass had been matted down, and the forest floor was black. Although there were no trees, the surrounding limbs more than covered the sky overhead, creating a calm and peaceful shade, in which several horses grazed.
They were tall and elegant, black as pitch, and skinny as a skeleton. Their faces were haunting, reptilian, with milky white eyes. Rose could see why they had been depicted as a death omen. The light seemed to dim around them, and their leathery wings looked very much like that of a bat.
"Did you bring something to feed them?" Remus asked, hesitantly. They were much bigger in real life than the textbooks had led him to believe, and they looked very dangerous.
"Of course," Rose replied. She pulled several raw carrots that she had nicked from the kitchens out of her bag and handed two to Remus.
"Go make some friends," she told him, walking up to one of the horses herself.
She chose a young mare, still not quite fully grown, to offer her treat to. She had grown up around horses, and these to her were no different, despite the fangs and scaly skin.
It was, in fact a very friendly horse, and it ambled up to her with no problems. She extended her gift, and after only a few moments, the carrot was gone. Carefully reaching up, the young mare let her rub the side of her face, even nuzzling back, and sniffing the air loudly in search of more treats.
Remus, on the other hand, did not have it so easily. He decided on a horse that was standing a bit towards the back, as it was looking at him curiously, almost wanting him to come over.
He stuck his spare carrot in his back pocket, and held the other in one hand, and his wand out and ready to use.
Carefully stepping around fallen branches and piles of horse manure, he noticed that some of the horses were eating something. Several had what looked like birds in their long, sharp jaws, especially mothers, looking for their young to feed. What he missed was that there was now a small herd of colts following him, looking for the food that he had brought. He stopped a generous distance away from the horse that he had in mind to feed, and reached out with the carrot. Fanged jaws swallowed it in one gulp, and he reached into his pocket, only to find the second carrot missing.
Turning around, he saw it in the mouth of the youngest colt.
"All right you little bugger, give that back," he threatened.
One of the other colts attempted to grab it from it's friend's mouth.
"Oi, not you too, that's mine." They paused for a moment, and looked up at him with expressionless white eyes.
Then, the third one bounded over, and made an ungodly shrill screech, like that of some sort of carnivorous bird, almost as though to say, 'I want some too!'.
Remus was now surrounded, and had to call Rose over to help.
She had been busy brushing the mane of her horse, which she had affectionately dubbed Susan, talking to it and carefully keeping any loose hairs.
When she saw Remus' predicament, she laughed.
"I think that they like you," she called, as more horses wandered over to surround him, looking to see what all the commotion was.
"I think that they like my carrots. Pass me a few extra," he responded. She obliged, and soon he was feeding half of the flock out of his hands. He too eventually took a comb, and brushed out as many manes and tails as possible, collecting a hairball the size of a small dog.
The crowd never dissipated. It seemed that they loved the attention that they were getting.
"We have to go Remus," Rose called, eventually.
"All right," he replied, attempting to get out of the crowd as politely as possible."'Scuse me, sorry, coming through."
When he reached the end of the mass, he saw the three young ones sitting on the outskirts of the group, now forced to wait their turn to get to the carrots that Remus had left in the middle. He gave each of them a pat. "Stay out of trouble, boys," he told them.
"You be careful, Sue," Rose told her horse, softly rubbing its nose. "I'll visit you soon," she promised, feeding her the last carrot.
Her horse whinnied softly in reply.
Neither one of them were glad to leave.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ellie had been thrilled to leave the abandoned settlement.
It appeared that the merpeople had left after they had been attacked.
Several decaying bodies laid in the muck, making it easy to grab their shiny silver scales. She made James do it, as she was not about to go anywhere near them.
The village itself must once have been some kind of beautiful. There were murals everywhere, some depicting what must have been the giant squid, others what obviously were the merpeople themselves, some with children, or even the sun. One painting showed a strange blue box, and another what was surely Dumbledore, with his silver beard, long hair, and half-moon spectacles.
The houses were built using mud and had seaweed growing from the roofs. Many even had fenced in yards. Yet, it was all abandoned. An underwater ghost town that had been left to rot. The pair of intruders exited the moment that they had what the needed, as their time was running out.
Only twenty minutes left.
Ahead of them now was a large cave, so large that they almost didn't notice that they had almost swum into it, mistaking it for a wall of the lake.
James risked a peek in, and decided that it would be the perfect place to explore, if they weren't on a deadline.
He noticed something moving from inside it, and before he could react, a large tentacle crept out of the darkness towards Ellie, moving slowly, but deliberately. James was close enough to pull her out of the way just in time, as the giant squid came lumbering out of what was surely its den, tentacles splayed everywhere, almost as though it was searching for them, moving slowly and methodically touching the landscape while it still could not see.
The pair quickly dodged and weaved across the clearing, headed for the far side, where a clump of weeds waited to hide them.
They tucked themselves inside, just as the eye of the beast looked out at them. Golden and perfectly spherical, it shone through the darkness, looking for the disturbance that it must have felt.
The pair stayed perfectly still.
Seeing nothing, the tentacles slowly came to a stop, and the squid moved carefully back into its dark home.
James breathed a sigh of relief.
In the grass, it was much darker, and both of them were slightly blinded by the eye of the squid.
"Ouch, James, let my hair alone," Ellie whispered, suddenly, from a few feet away, not wanting to be loud enough to let the squid know where they were.
"I'm not touching you, I'm all the way over here," he replied indignantly, assuming that she was imagining it, curious as to how she sounded like she was far away when she was tightly gripping his shoulder.
"Seriously, knock it off," she replied, sounding like she was beginning to struggle.
"I'm way over here," he insisted.
"Then what the h-"
James lit his wand tip, which he had now since pulled out of his pocket.
"Bloody-"
Surrounding Ellie, and pulling on her golden blonde hair in several directions were a swarm of water demons, grindylows. They had small ugly heads with horns, and pale green skin, along with terribly long and spindly fingers which were not at all unlike spider legs.
When Ellie saw them, she too began cursing and screaming, which made the tiny demons screech in delight.
They swarmed her with deadly precision and began to scratch and bite, dragging her further into the murk.
James could do nothing, as he was suddenly coated in the things too.
Ellie grabbed at her pocket for her wand, and as she pulled it out, a grindylow swept in and emptied all of the rest of the contents.
"RELASHIO!" She hollered, sending a boiling jet of water at her attackers, doing what she had learned in defense against the dark arts. Her spell connected, sending several of the demons spinning away. One however, dodged quickly, quite a feat, considering that it was holding a relatively large jar of gillyweed, and was able to open it and shred a whole string and a half of the precious substance before another jet of water could defeat it.
Ellie quickly closed the jar on the one remaining string and firmly shoved it back in its pocket.
James, meanwhile was really struggling.
He had only managed to rip a few of them off and throw them as far as he could (which would have ordinarily been a challenge underwater, but was extraordinarily so with all of the beasts swarming him). Struggling and attempting to avoid being attacked again, the pair ended up back out of the weeds and into the clearing once again, in front of the giant squid den.
This time, the beast had fully shot out within seconds, its enormity overwhelming. It was at least twenty feet long.
With startling speed and accuracy, it began to pluck the grindylows off of James and into its mouth where a huge beak smashed them. It was incredibly careful not to touch James, although the demons only scratched him harder. It gave him the chance that he needed, however, to begin burning them off with his wand, which he did gladly, cursing the creatures as he went.
When the demons were all gone, only the squid remained.
It paused for a moment, and looked them over, deciding whether they needed any further help, and apparently assuming that they would be all right, slowly slunk back into its home.
"Well," blinked James, watching it go. "That was exciting. Although, I suppose I'll be back in the infirmary tomorrow to get patched up."
"Me too," Ellie winced, looking at her legs, which were covered in claw marks.
"Five minutes," James reminded. It would take at least thirty to get back to the dock, and so they would have to hurry if they wanted to make it.
"Oh, here's the extra gillyweed for you. We don't want to run out and have to worry about that later," Ellie said, handing James the only half of a piece that was left.
She had decided to let him have it, and not to tell him yet that she didn't have any more for herself. She didn't want to have to argue with him.
He noticed anyway.
"Where's yours? And what about the rest of it?" He asked, concerned.
"About that..." She began. "A grindylow shredded it. I think that you should take the rest. I'll manage without it," Ellie replied, hoping to dismiss him.
"What?!" James asked, alarmed.
"Don't we have more?"
"No. Look, you need to take this now. We don't have time to argue-"
"Then you take it! You come first."
"James, I can't carry you with me, you'll drown. And besides, air isn't a problem, I can do a bubbleheaded charm. I'll be able to breathe fine. I can trust you to get me up," Ellie insisted.
"Then what is the problem?" James asked, ignoring her faith in him.
"It's the cold. We can't feel it now, but without the gillyweed, we would have already gotten hypothermia and frostbite twelve times over," Ellie replied. "Just warm me up when we get out of the water and I'll be fine. We're running out of time. We need to go. Now."
They began racing back towards the dock, as fast as they could, still arguing along the way.
"Can't you use a spell to stay warm?" James asked, while Ellie pulled ahead, much more used to using the flippers than he was.
"No. I... I can't remember any. Gods, we should have made Rose do this. She would know what to do. Now take that gillyweed before we both drown. There's no way that you're going to be able to force me to eat it." She was still hurrying, now beginning to feel the magic fading. She pushed harder, although her fins began to shrink.
James was only able to catch up to her once the fins were gone completely. She had slowed down, barely able to breathe as her gills left her. She tapped her wand on her head and suddenly surrounded it with a giant bubble of fresh air. It was a neat trick, and James would have asked how it worked on any other day, but he was immediately alarmed by her lips turning blue.
"Are you ok?" He asked. She tried replying, but couldn't through the helmet of air, instead nodding vigorously. She needed him to hurry. Already shaking viciously from the cold, she couldn't move her limbs after only a few minutes of swimming, so she curled up, and he held her while he kicked to the dock, going as fast as his legs could carry him. She wondered if it would take her death for James to finally actually ask her out.
Her hands began turning blue as frostbite set in. He held her, and wanted to tell her how he felt, but decided that it wasn't exactly the time for confessing love.
Finally, he breached the surface.
"PETER!" He screamed, before going back under for a breath. Peter to his credit must have been waiting patiently and came running, in time for him to pull Ellie out. James waited in the water, and hoped that she was getting warm, but could only come out fifteen minutes later, after his gillyweed wore off. He only had a brief taste of the cold, and it was horrible. His skin felt like he was being stabbed with daggers of ice, and his breath suddenly refused to come. He had trouble getting his hands to work as he scrambled up the ladder and performed a drying spell to get rid of the water. There were loads of towels and blankets waiting, stolen from the laundry, and he bundled up well before meeting his friends at the far end of the dock. Ellie was sitting on a log at a fire with Peter and Sirius, dry, and now apparently warmed, drinking what must have been hot coca, her blonde hair falling down her shoulders over a red blanket, snow flakes just beginning to drop over them.
"How was being a fish?" Sirius asked.
"Not too bad. Although why we couldn't have done this when it was still warm is beyond me," James replied. "You okay?" He asked Ellie.
"Thanks to you," she grinned, offering him the thermos of hot drink. He took it and swallowed it greedily.
When he finally came up for air, he realized that everyone was waiting on him.
"Rose wants us back at the chamber a soon as we can be there," Peter explained.
"Then we'd better not keep her waiting," James replied.
Hey guys! What a lovely near-death experience, am I right? Well, just wait, because there's still loads more to come. Thanks for reading and reviewing! Don't let the muggles get you down!
post edit: so i had something to write here but i forgot it UGH MY LIFE. oh well thanks for reading and dealing with my shenanigans anyway!